Exceprt form Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century by Edward Francis Kelly et al. 2007:
One case was that of a man who for two years had suffered from "a tumor in the antrum maxillare; the tumor had pushed up the orbit of the eye, filled up the nose, passed into the throat, and caused an enlargement of the neck" (Esdaile, 1846, p. 147). Although the patient proved difficult to mesmerize, Esdaile finally succeeded in doing so. Then, he reports the following:
I performed one of the most severe and protracted operations in surgery…. I put a long knife in at the corner of his mouth, and brought the point out over the cheek-bone, dividing the parts between; from this, I pushed it through the skin at the inner corner of the eye, and dissected the cheek back to the nose. The pressure of the tumor had caused the absorption of the anterior wall of the antrum, and on pressing my fingers between it and the bones, it burst, and a shocking gush of blood, and brain-like matter, followed. The tumor extended as far my fingers could reach under the orbit and cheek-bone, and passed into the gullet, having destroyed the bones and partition of the nose….The man never moved, nor showed any signs of life, except an occasional indistinct moan. 39 (pp. 148-149)
EDIT: The quote was taken from Mesmerism in India, and its practical application in surgery and medicine by Esdaile. The whole text can be found on page 147 of the book. Here it is on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/63721400R.nlm.nih.gov/page/n149/mode/2up
by sim_ulacrum
6 Comments
Is this story about a doctor that saved a guy or did he just kill him? Sort of left us on a cliffhanger there
Yeah what the hell happened next??
Uurrrgghh
That was good writing but that description was yuck
What happened next??!
Finally, something that doesn’t bore me. And no resolution? Guess I’ll have to read the book. Thanks for the reference.
First heard about Esdaile when listening to Anthony Peakes, “The Hidden Universe” (highly recommend it btw). Thanks for posting this, reminded me to find out more about him.
From GPT4o:
The patient who underwent the surgery performed by James Esdaile, involving the removal of a large tumor from the antrum maxillare, **did survive the procedure**, according to the historical records of Esdaile’s surgical work. The surgery was performed using Esdaile’s method of deep mesmerism (hypnosis), which he used as an alternative to anesthesia. While the surgery itself was incredibly intense, involving major tissue and bone dissection, the patient remained in a trance-like state throughout and did not display significant signs of pain.
Esdaile’s overall success rate in his mesmeric surgeries was notably high for the time. He had a reported **mortality rate of just 5%**, compared to the significantly higher rates of other surgeries without anesthesia, which often exceeded 50%. This low mortality rate indicates that most of his patients, including those undergoing major procedures like the one described, survived.